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Tag Archives: US elections

Every few years, the world starts boiling with hypotheses on the direction the US will take after the mascot in the White House is replaced. And unless you live in a remote part of the world, where the mainstream western media is unavailable or ignored, you’re bound to hear all about the presidential campaigns.

It’s basically like watching the X Factor with a bit more vitriol. Everything but the candidates’ underpants becomes of public interest and steals the stage from actual current events.

After the awaited elections, when the spell of the marketing campaign wears off and nothing changes for the better, Americans, just as every other nation, end up in disillusion, placing bets on the newest hope on the horizon. After all this time and a massive (though not sufficient) political awakening across the planet, people still partake, intellectually and emotionally, in this cheap spectacle, though so many know that the reins of power lie somewhere else.

Time and time again, people get drawn into politics, ending up in fits of anger against complete strangers on the other side of the globe. All this energy goes towards corporate mouthpieces who will never give a toss about them, their families, their businesses or their way of life.

They spend their time lauding the candidate of their choice to the point of nausea and demonising the other side; the gratuitous ass-kissing must be incredibly funny for candidates themselves, if they ever spare a minute to inquire about it.

It’s particulalry funny to see people who claim to be politically aware (into the alternative movement, libertarianism etc) praising Donald Trump to the high heavens, as some sort of Jesus figure, their only salvation in the face of religiously motivated terrorism and political correctness. You’d think they were a few feet above all that. The opposition, on the other hand, sees this individual as the incarnation of Satan, who will undoubtedly destroy their country and as a consequence their lives.

There are violent clashes at political manifestations; people being beaten and even killed. Crowds holding signs with two strangers’ photographs on them, cheering and shouting with religious fervour. Pardon my frankness but this is nothing short of a cult of personality, in the so-called heart of civilised democracy.

I’ve seen people agitating against Trump in my country of origin, back in Eastern Europe, where fuck knows why, completely ordinary folks are encouraged by the media to become hysterical about another country’s elections. They are avidly consuming this spectacle they will never be involved in, or very likely, be affected by.

All in all, the spectacle will culminate in the grad day of “long live the new president”, followed by a short while of anxious hope versus unjustified panic. Then calm, then apathy, then disappointment, then back to square one.